Strange Perl Behavior

I have been working on a strange problem I've been having. I am readinga series of large files (50 mb or so) in one at a time with: @lines = <FILE>;or (same behavior with each) while(<FILE>){ push(@lines, $_); }The first time I read a file it will read into the array in about 2seconds. The second time I try to read a file in (the same size) ittakes about 20 seconds. Everything is declared locally inside the loopso, everything is leaving scope. I am not sure why it is taking so muchlonger the second time. I need to read the entire file in because I am doing a series of operations on the lines that is not known at compile time.I have narrowed the problem down to a few different areas:1. It seems that if I read the file into a large scaler by $/ = undef,the file gets read faster. So, I assume the slow down is taking placeinside the spliting of the lines.2. If I try to append to one large array, rather then rewritting to adifferent array, the slow down does not occur. So it seems Perl has ahard time with the memory it already has but its fine with memory itjust took from the system?3. The problem does not seem to happen in Linux, but I'm workingWindows.Any suggestions for a workaround? Has anyone else seen this? Thanks inadvance.Ben

Could you be more specific? Is this multiple file loads in the same script? Also, how much RAM do you have? I have an idea as to why this may be occuring but I need those pieces of information to help.~Viz

The file loads are in the same script and I have 2 gb of ram.

Could you either post the script here so I can a) test it myself, and check it out, or PM it to me if it is too large to post (more than maybe 50 or so lines tops). I promise to try and help to the best of my ability.~Viz

Its seriously just reeding the file in, try:for(1..2){ my @lines; open(FILE, file1.txt); while(<FILE>) { push(@lines, $_); }}It doesn't have to be opening the same file again but I used that just to make it easier.